The Kindness Of Your Nature - a beautifully written, sensitive novel

‘I thought his name was Mika, but ever since that first day when I had misheard him I had called him Ika and he didn’t seem to mind. He told me it meant fish and I thought it suited him. Even before I saw his hands … I had started when I first heard what he called me. Mama. It became his name for me. His very own. It wasn’t that I was a sort of mother to him, I think. No, he told me it meant light. I wasn’t sure if he meant light as in not heavy, or the opposite of darkness. I thought the former, but sometimes I liked to think he meant the latter. Whichever it was, I liked it.’

 – The Kindness Of Your Nature by Linda Olsson

Marion Flint lives alone near Kawhia, on the isolated west coast of New Zealand's North Island. One day she meets a small boy, Ika, lying face down on the empty, rugged beach. An unlikely friendship begins between the Swedish doctor and the silent child with webbed feet and a fear of being touched.

The Kindness Of Your Nature is a beautifully written, sensitive novel that draws you in and explores the many forms love takes – the destructive, the forbidden and, ultimately, the healing

About the author:

Linda Olsson was born in Stockholm, Sweden in 1948. She graduated from the University of Stockholm with a law degree, and worked in law and finance until she left Sweden in 1986. What was intended as a three-year posting to Kenya then became a meandering tour of the world with stops in Singapore, the UK and Japan, until she settled in New Zealand with her family. 

Linda's first novel Let Me Sing You Gentle Songs (published elsewhere as Astrid & Veronika) was published in New Zealand in 2005 and became a huge international success, selling hundreds of thousands of copies in Scandinavia, Europe and the United States. It was followed by the heart-breaking and moving Sonata for Miriam, also a best-seller in Scandinavia. Linda currently splits her time every year between New Zealand and Sweden.